April 13, 2013

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    I had a meltdown today. Or as I sometimes say to myself, "Eloise came out to play."

    Eloise was my mother. And she was a fine mother. I have whined extensively over my lifetime about the God awful, horrible things my mother did to me and I am pretty much accustomed to my friends gazing at me solemnly, listening to me wail on my tale of woe, until eventually they say, "She made your clothes for you?" or "you got to square dance?" or "your mother took five kids camping for a week all by herself?" Or my personal favorite, "Wow--all five of you lied to her about your little brother's blood poisoning until you got to the campsite and she found out, a hundred miles from home with very little money and no credit card, and she was mad about that?" She was a wonderful mother. Funny. Unrelentingly loyal to her kids.

    She did know how to throw a tantrum.

    I studied at the feet of a master.

    I was steam-cleaning the carpets in our house, which is not my favorite job (my favorite job is playing spider solitaire on the computer.) I was cleaning the carpets because we have one perfectly house-trained dog, one dead cat who suffered, at the end of his days, with renal failure, and our beloved little Annie, who is morally opposed to getting her tush cold. This leaves little gold spots on our green carpet and a scent we refer to as 'eau de chat piss'. But the cat is dead, and the spots still appear. I have no idea how that happened. Annie is shocked. She has skills when it comes to making unauthorized and unwitnessed deposits. So I wasn't really blaming the dog for my Saturday chores, but I was cognizant of what I was washing away.

    Cleaning the carpet is not hard work, but I am not an athletic person and the machine is big and heavy and I have a number of bodily complaints, most of which are aggravated by standing up and pushing things. The steam-cleaner has about a 1 gallon capacity for water and it steams through a gallon of water in just about ten minutes. It has about a cup and a half capacity for soap and it steams through the soap in about 15 minutes. So they don't even run out at the same time. Also--not matter how often you run the vacuum--the steamer accumulates wads of dead cat hair and sand which it throws at your feet. So you are either filling the water tank, the soap tanks or picking up wads of hair of the cat (who sheds at least as much dead as he did alive) ALL OF THE TIME. And the cord is short and gets stuck between my bare toes, wraps around one of my ankles or jerks free of the wall fairly regularly.

    But I did it.

    I was two-thirds done. I had sweat running off my forehead, I was breathing like a freight train and my back, my knee and my shoulder all ached, and I turned around to look over what I had done...

    ...and there were little black dog prints all over my still-wet, freshly-cleaned carpet.

    Mud.

    Thick, congealed mud in perfectly readable, distinctly dog prints. The kind of prints made not by a wandering dog, or an outside peeing as needed dog, but by a digging, dirt-wallowed,black mud to the knees dog.

    Words of an anti-social and possibly blasphemous nature fell out of my mouth.

    The dog ran like the wind for the dog door, threw herself outside and calmed herself by digging some more. 

    I changed my steam water (again), waited patiently for the heater to do its work (again) and steamed-cleaned the muddy dog prints. Which ruined my cleaning water, incidentally, and taxed my soap supply.

    And finally I was finished.

    I turned off the machine.

    Dumped the muddy water.

    And listened to the familiar sound of...

    ...my dogs barking like fools because nothing will suit them until we are thrown out of the neighborhood for excessive noise.

    And I went to the back door, and I called the dogs in, and Riley came in and I wiped all four of his paws and Annie piled in through the door behind him, saw the rag and said, You're going to beat me, aren't? 

    And ran back out the door.

    She would not come in.

    She would not take a treat.

    When she took the treat, she bolted off across the yard to the far corner to eat it.

    She was so cold she started to shake (it was sleeting.)

    "All I want to do was brush the dirt off your paws." 

    You're going to kill me, she said. I heard you yell in the house--you've gone completely insane and you're possessed by your dead mother and probably that damned cat. 

    "You've lived with me since the end of August and I have never hurt you."

    That was then, Cheryl. Now you're insane.

    "Annie, come."

    I can't, Cheryl--you're possessed and you'll kill me.

    "Don't tempt me, Annie--just come in the house."

    I'm going to stay out here and freeze now, Cheryl. Explain that to Nancy.

    I explained it to Nancy when she came home. She  admired the little black dog prints all over my freshly-steamed carpet and I said, "We haven't made any progress with that dog at all, she's as crazy as she was the day we got her, she's convinced I'm going to kill her, she's lived with us since the end of August and she's exactly the same as she was the day I bought her home! Riley learns things--this dog hasn't learned a God-damned thing!"

    My partner has lived with me for a long time now. She doesn't even try to argue: she brings me chocolate.

    So I was sitting at my deck, seething with frustration and fury, wondering if we will EVER teach this useless dog a single thing--forget trust, forget coming when called, forget 'stop barking', how about just 'pee OUTSIDE'--and I was eating my chocolate--and something nudged me.

    Something small and black, eternally hungry and muddy of foot.

    Should I have some of that,Cheryl? Because it looks like you like it alot, and as you know, I am ALWAYS hungry  

    I grabber her collar and she gazed up at me soulfully, one ear up and one ear down.

    Because you and me, Cheryl, we're buds, you know. What you eat, I eat.

    "Aren't you worried about your feet?"

    And the dog sighs. What ARE you talking about, Cheryl?

    "Six minutes ago you were scared to death of me."

    Did you have chocolate?*

     

    *I do. I know, it's very, very  bad. I usually tell her that while she eats it. I don't give her a LOT of chocolate, but I do occasionally give her some. When she was scared to death of me I had dehydrated chicken treats, which I have been told by dogs both gold and black are the very best treats in the world. Riley forgets how the dog door works every night because if I have to come get him to bring him in I give him a chicken treat. He naps right up next to the door so he won't accidentally miss me when I come. Riley learns.